October 17, 2006

Inspirational Feedback

Visitors to this site will know that I don't in the main post endorsements from people who have attended my courses in this section. However there is always a first and the following story gives a fantastic insight into the wisdom of daring to dream. I interject only to highlight the learning points:

Just a note to say thanks....got to see you, I think it was last year when
you done a workshop for Enterprise Ireland.

I attended with my sister Caroline....which was great because every now and
again, if things are not going so well we remind each other of your
inspirational talk.
My wife Zane and I at the time were putting together plans for our house, a
Log cabin from Zane's home town in Latvia.
At that time, Zane was working part-time in local garden centre, I was working a few days per week. We had made a decision to be at home for our daughter (now three).
The plan was a bit mad but for us a dream to bring a bit of Latvia to
Ireland and to live in a healthy natural house.

"Choose to go up the mountain with a mountain climber!"

When we aired the idea of the log cabin, many people advised us that we were out of our tree.
"You won't get a mortgage - planning will be difficult - who will insure you."
All this did was make us more focused what we wanted.

I took courses and we visited people who sold log houses.

"Knowledge always gives you enough reasons not to act."
However we still didn't totally commit thinking that logistically this was a challenge, to put it mildly. Getting the house across Europe was one thing but to get it up the narrow boreen to the site, appeared impossible.

It was some time later and an encounter with one of your seminars that I realised that we would never forgive ourselves if we didn't recognise the signs that this was the house that we wanted, and it seemed wanted us!
We set about designing the house ourselves, I done all the drawings (My technical qualifications, an 'F' in the Junior Cert in 1983, and a CAD course over 16 hours in 1999).
Last week we moved into the house.
It was built over six months in Latvia, then arrived in Ireland on July 2nd in three forty foot artics.
The building has since featured on an RTE documentary (Building on the edge) and the Irish Independent .

So many times over the past months I've drawn inspiration from your words,
the pages of "How? When You Don't Know How" and "Life: A Trip Towards Trust"
are well fingered at this stage.
I just realised as we got ready to move in that we were going to be "Living
in a Tree". The journey of designing, building and living in a house like
this makes the journey back to normality all the more difficult!!
All typical notions of career advancement or status attainment are
superseded by the drive to achieve personal fulfilment.

"Teachers open the door but you must enter by yourself."
I now don't feel the need to refer to your publications anymore, I just look
around me and feel the fruits of trusting in myself and I just love the
little surprises that happen,

"Trust with you heart and watch your life become one of magic and adventure."
....like recently getting to sing alongside the Harlem Gospel Choir as an aside was told I couldn't sing in school also!....or meeting wonderful
positive people who just arrive at the door with the solution to a problem
that we haven't been able to answer.

Kevin, keep up the good work and thanks again.

Thank you Bernard for the affirmation and the spell boundng story.

Posted by Kevin Kelly at October 17, 2006 11:56 AM